The Green and Vermilion
Not half an hour after my encounter with the furnace workers, I had an even more surprising experience. I was still gradually working my way upward through the interminable labyrinths, when unexpectedly I came out on a broad thoroughfare, where great multitudes of chalk-faces were convening. From the manner in which they lined themselves along the sides of the avenue, leaving the center clear, I knew that some sort of a spectacle was expected; and this excited my curiosity, so much so that I again forgot caution, mingled with the crowds, and pushed forward so as to secure a position in the front row. Once more, fortunately, I was protected by the inability of the natives to see things near at hand; I was now so hemmed in by them that they did not view me as I really was, and accordingly I felt safer than if observed at a distance.
No sooner had I edged my way to the front than the crowd broke into cheers, which were dinned and repeated in ever-growing volume, while the spectators seemed to grow mad with excitement, and jumped and stamped in glee, and flung their arms high in air, and shouted till their lungs were hoarse. What they were shouting about was not quite clear to me, although I made an effort to join in the chorus; I thought, however, that I could make out something like, "Long live the green and vermilion! Long live the green and vermilion!" and at first the impression came to me that I was about to witness a football game. Only on this ground could I explain the mad agitation of the people.
But as the tumult subsided, a great banner hanging from the ceiling reminded me that green and vermilion were the national colors of Wu. I would now have guessed the nature of the celebration, even had it not been for my conversation with the jovial-looking, portly chalk-face just to my right. This gentleman, whose cheers had roared into my ears until I was almost deafened, turned to me genially as soon as the shouting had died down, and made a remark to me, with an expectant smile.
"Well, guess they'll be coming any minute now!"
"Guess they will!" I agreed, although I still had only the vaguest notion who "they" might be.
"This is General Bing's greatest triumph!" went on my garrulous neighbor. "Just imagine, he's retaken three-fifths of the lower left-hand corner of Nullnull—at a cost of only a million and a quarter lives! Marvelous, I call it!"
"Marvelous!" I concurred.
"True, he couldn't hold it very long," went on my companion, ruefully. "He was outnumbered too strongly. But he did keep it a good three-quarters of a wake! And they say that, when retreating, he didn't have to vacate more than four-fifths of the lower left-hand corner of Nullnull, at a cost of another million and a quarter lives. An extraordinary strategic victory, I call it!"
"Extraordinary!" I acknowledged.
"So it's only proper, isn't it, that Thuno Flâtum, our good Dictator, should grant a triumphal procession, in order that we may pay public tribute to the greatness of General Bing? Look! here they come!"
Suddenly the mob let out such a howl of acclaim that I had to clap my palms to my ears for protection. To the accompaniment of blaring horns, and of a clanging instrument known as a "bange," which made a noise resembling a cannonade, an elegant-looking procession of dignitaries rode into view on slow-moving little "scootscoots." On one of the foremost cars, surrounded by a bodyguard of a hundred warriors and several scores of obsequious valets, rode a man in a gorgeous crimson uniform—none other than General Bing himself! The exalted rank of this personage would, of course, have been apparent from many facts: the long ear-tubes, the projecting eye-tubes, the nose-tubes and mouth-tubes, and his dwarfish stature and weazened legs, all of which proved him to be a kinsman of Dictator Thuno Flâtum—in short, a First Class Citizen!
Just why the General should have been so popular with the Second and Third Classes was more than I could understand; but so great was public admiration that many heads bowed themselves into the gutter as he passed, while countless eyes shed tears of happy emotion.
"You see, he bears a charmed life," stated the portly neighbor to my right. "All generals bear charmed lives; that's why we honor them as heroes. In order to keep their lives charmed, they direct the battles from a distance of fifty miles, sometimes more; for what a loss to the country if they should be—er—turned over!"
"Yes, what a loss!" I coincided.
The main body of the procession was now passing—and a gallant sight it was! There were several other generals who, like Commander-in-Chief Bing, were dressed either in crimson, or in crimson striped with black; there were hundreds of banners of green and vermilion, and several yellow-and-purple banners said to have been captured during the strategic retreat from Nullnull; there were scores of large-sized "scootscoots" laden with blackened uniforms taken from the enemy; there were several dozen war-heroes, who had received the "Dictatorial Badge of Honor," and were so covered with decorations that it was impossible to see their faces; there were innumerable placards proclaiming the vastness of the recent victories, which, it seemed, were without precedent "in the history of civilized massacre"; and there were, finally, thousands of common soldiers, who walked twenty abreast with the peculiar high-swinging foot motion of the native infantry, reminding me once more of prancing horses, except for the slowness and automatic precision with which they advanced.
All these men wore helmets, of the peculiar hatchet shape I had already observed; and in their hands, instead of swords or rifles, they carried long poles. On the top of each of these I observed curious round glittering objects which, at the first glimpse, looked most attractive, for the wiry sheaths caught the light and flashed it back resplendently. But, on a closer view, I shuddered and turned pale. Under each of the gleaming metallic coverings, there leered a naked skull!
While I reeled backward, horrified at this sight, I heard the cheers of the throng. "Look at the proofs of our victory! The proofs of our victory! Proofs of our victory! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" they howled, pointing to the shining protuberances on the poles. Evidently their vision was so poor that they could not see beneath the sparkling surface!
Following the foot soldiers, dozens of huge vans came rumbling down the avenue, electrically propelled, and bearing great machines that I can only describe as dragons of a hundred necks, since their steel bodies bristled with scores of long tapering tubes, twenty feet high, and pointing in all directions, like the throats of siege guns.
Their steel bodies bristled with scores of long tapering tubes, twenty feet high, and pointing in all directions, like the throats of siege guns.
"Just look at them! Just look!" excitedly sputtered the neighbor to my right, while I was wondering what these engines might be. "If there's not the lightning-spitters!"
"The lightning what!" I demanded.
"Lightning-spitters!" he cried, his voice barely audible above the rumbling of the machines. "Of course, you've heard of them! One of the most remarkable inventions of modern times!"
Even as he spoke, a blade of orange electricity shot from one of the machines, darting to the ceiling in a swift zigzag, and was succeeded instantly by blades of green and crimson light, while miniature thunders rolled.
Now all at once I understood the nature of the machines! They were the source of those lightnings which had wiped out whole armies in the battle cavern, before the dazzled eyes of Clay and myself! They were the same lightnings that had threatened us both, and that might, for all I knew, have taken Clay's life!
"Of course, those are only toy lightnings, for demonstration purposes," my portly neighbor rambled on, while other shafts of colored light shot harmlessly upward. "But these same machines have wiped out whole armies!"
"What's the principle behind them?" I asked.
My neighbor shrugged his shoulders. "How do I know? It's a carefully guarded secret of the authorities. However, they say that the power of Mulflar is used to generate electricity in the machine—to generate it in such excessive quantities that the engine becomes supercharged and releases its energy through the tubes in tremendous lightning blades."
"I see," said I. "The machine becomes somewhat like a thunder-cloud, supercharged with positive electricity—"
"Thunder-cloud?" demanded my companion. "What's that?"
I perceived that I had used the wrong illustration, for, of course, thunder-clouds were not known underground.
"The only trouble," proceeded my neighbor, after I had vainly tried to convey an idea of the nature of a thunder-cloud—"the only trouble is in aiming the lightnings. Of course, we try to direct them accurately through the different tubes, but they don't always go where we want them to. You can never tell where the lightning will strike."
"I should call that a fatal difficulty," said I.
"Not at all! Wherever it hits, it's certain to kill—that is to say—" here he paused, greatly embarrassed—"that is to say, to turn over some of the enemy. And that, after all, is the only thing that counts!"
I was about to reply, remarking that I perhaps owed my life to the inexpertness of the foe in aiming the lightnings, when all at once the crowd broke into song, chanting the National Anthem in a tumultuous chorus as the last of the lightning-spitters rolled past.
Unfortunately, I have forgotten all the stanzas except the first two; but these, which I give in a translation that does scant justice to the magnificence of the original, will illustrate the theme and idea of the whole:
Let us fight forever!
We'll be conquered never
While we've heads to sever
From our brutish foes!
Let us fight forever
With a gay endeavor!
We are keen and clever
With electric blows!
Where the lightning flashes
In mechanic clashes,
And the thunder crashes,
Grind our foes to dust!
How our fury slashes,
Dealing scarlet gashes,
Till the earth is ashes—
Lord, in Thee we trust!
The crowd had just completed the twenty-first stanza, and was singing the chorus with resounding gusto, when I suddenly observed something that made me lose all interest in the celebration. Among the throngs across the gallery, I caught sight of an ugly-looking chalk-face, with thin slits of eyes and a twisted nose, who was staring at me with such an intent scrutiny that I felt a chill traveling down my spine. Did he suspect me of being a spy?—or was he an agent of the government, sent to arrest me for breaking my Oath of Fidelity and running away from the Ventilation Office?
Now all at once I remembered that I was a fugitive from justice; and, with a tremor of terror, I pushed my way back into the crowd, resolved on instant flight; while the neighbor to my right, having finished singing the National Anthem, stepped forward with an excited cry, and exclaimed, "Oh, just look! The Subterrains are coming; the Subterrains are coming!"
But I did not wait to see the Subterrains, whatever they might be. The vision of that man with the thin slits of eyes and twisted nose drove all other thoughts from my mind as I wormed my way deeper into the mob; and the dread of being taken back to face the violet-ray or marry Loa lent haste to my footsteps.
Yet it was not to be long before I would learn the nature of the Subterrain.